Saturday - August 29, 2020 - From our poetry archives: "Bobby Wiley” - Tom Davidson.

Continued from yesterday’s daily, which featured Tom Davidson’s poem, “Darius Azmeh-Volpato,” we present the companion persona poem from the author, “Bobby Wiley,” both appearing within Issue No. 3 - Winter - 2017-18.

We love the image of “robins / jerking around on the branches,” and join with the author, as well as with Bobby Wiley, in “say[ing] goodbye to bad shit happening.”

All of our best,
Curlew Quarterly

______________________________

BOBBY WILEY

The baseball junkie next door stinks like grease.
Looks like he’s about to croak. He ain’t clean.

I AM.

Been spick and span for six years.
Back then I said goodbye to hocking junk
& bombing liquor. Goodbye

to stealing azaleas and axles, to stockpiling turpentine,
to stewing in the gutter, to holy beaters,
and the street demon peddlers.

I said goodbye to bad shit happening.

That’s when I was transferred to this building,
took one of the only single units left.
From my window I can see robins
jerking around on the branches.

I’d probably kill myself if I was a robin.
Turning up leaves all day to find
nothing. Free as a bird they say, but that’s not
any kind of freedom I want to partake in.

Freedom is a CLEAN mind, a CLEAN body.
And it takes mental focus.

It takes all you’ve got.